It was a warm room of soft textures and deep rich colours, with amber and maroon striking the predominant note. There seemed to be no hard surfaces, only silk melting into velvet and velvet into brocade. The room basked in the soft glow of indirect lighting and the shimmer of gold leaf. There were several art nouveau lamps in the shape of mermaids, an ottoman and a mahogany baby grand, on which stood a signed black-and-white photograph of Princess Anna of Montenegro wearing a slouch hat. A magnificent volume bound in blue leather embossed with the heraldic fleur-de-lis of Bourbon France lay open on a round malachite table.
Producing a magnifying glass, Payne sprawled on the floor, Sherlock Holmes-fashion, but not even the slightest patch of discoloration was discernible. The blood had gone. Tancred Vane explained that he had had a cleaning crew at the house early that morning; they had spent three hours rubbing and scrubbing away. The window curtains had already been changed. The police had said he could. Where had the sword hung? Vane pointed. The nail was still there, a particularly monstrous nail with a head nearly as big as a ping-pong ball.
‘Stella said her daughter would like the sword. It was the kind of thing her daughter was interested in. She asked how much a sword like that would cost and seemed profoundly shocked when I told her the price I’d paid for it.’ Tancred Vane paused. ‘Is the daughter still under suspicion?’
‘I believe she is, but the police don’t seem to have enough evidence for an arrest. That bloodstained handkerchief now – did they show it to you?’
‘They did. It had the initials MM. I told them I’d never seen it before.’
‘Did you never doubt Miss Hope was the genuine article, Vane?’
‘I must confess I didn’t. Not even after she began to make mistakes – getting names and dates wrong and so on. Not even when she described a non-existent lodge!’ The royal biographer sighed. ‘She kept apologizing for being such a “muddle-headed old ass”. She said she had never been a particular devotee of the French cult of lucidite. She did say droll things. She made me laugh.’
‘You didn’t get any pinpricks of doubt every now and then?’
‘I did – but I dismissed them. I went on believing her. I thought it was her age. Elderly ladies do get confused. I never for a moment imagined she was much younger than that.’
‘Melisande Chevret can’t be any more than fifty-five or six… She made herself look a quarter of a century older because she needed to fit into her historical narrative,’ Payne said thoughtfully. ‘Miss Hope was a girl of fifteen when she became nanny to Prince Cyril’s son – and that was in 1941, you said?’
‘Yes… I suppose it had to be 1941. A year earlier would have made her too young to have been employed at the palace and it couldn’t have been a year later either since in 1942 Bulgaria had already abandoned its neutrality and joined the war as an ally of Germany. The idea of an English girl working for a pro-Nazi German prince would have raised eyebrows. She kept it all on the edge of credibility, I can see that now.’
‘She seems to have thought the whole thing through very carefully. I never thought Melisande was particularly clever,’ said Payne. ‘It seems I was wrong… Miss Hope was a good raconteuse, I take it?’
The royal biographer said that that would have been putting it mildly. There had been something mesmeric about Miss Hope’s tales of life at the palace. She had come up with the most fascinating details, with all kinds of absurdities and amusing trivialities.
Tancred Vane frowned. ‘There were things that didn’t quite add up, things that were somewhat out of kilter – but I never really suspected-’
‘What things? Give me an example.’
‘Um. All right. Would a royal prince in the 1940s have his mistress and illegitimate child living in the palace grounds? Would he have paraded them at royal events? But I never questioned any of it seriously. Miss Hope always managed to end on a cliff-hanger of sorts. It made me long for our next session.’
‘Ah. The Scheherazade effect.’ Payne nodded. ‘She set out to get you hooked and succeeded.’
‘I can’t believe that all along she was after that poor woman. I simply can’t. Makes me sick, thinking about it. And why did she continue coming after Stella’s death?’
‘My aunt asked the very same question.’ Major Payne admitted that the precise reason for the continued visits still eluded him.
‘She is mad – must be,’ Tancred Vane murmured. ‘I have been in thrall to a mad woman.’
‘What exactly did she say when she saw me through the window?’
‘She said something terrible would happen if I let you in. She begged me not to open the front door. Later – after you left – she said she’d made a mistake. She’d taken you for somebody else. She apologized profusely for alarming me. She said she was an old fool. She had problems with her eyes. She said she needed new glasses.’
‘Do you think she managed to eavesdrop on our conversation? I believe I heard the creaking of a floorboard.’
‘No idea. I found her exactly where I’d left her in my study, sitting by the window. Well, her face was very flushed and I thought she looked a little tense. She did ask who you were, what you wanted and so on… I told her part of the truth – that you’d been asked by James Morland – Stella’s fiance – to “look into the matter” since he didn’t trust the police.’
‘She left soon after?’
‘Yes. She complained of feeling a little under the weather. Old age catching up with her at long last, she feared. She seemed nearly her old roguish self again – though, come to think of it, she didn’t give me her usual peck.’
‘Did she usually give you a peck?’
‘Yes… on the cheek.’ Tancred Vane blushed. ‘No, I can’t believe she killed Stella… Not with the samurai sword… The whole thing is ridiculous – grotesque! And yet it must be her! Stella looked really frightened the day she met her – she kept staring at her – she then blurted out all those questions! How old was Miss Hope? Where did she live? She then asked me if I knew the actress Melisande Chevret. It all fits in, doesn’t it?’
‘It does, old boy. I’m afraid it does.’
‘Why did she continue coming after she killed Stella? I keep puzzling over it. It makes no sense. What was her purpose?’
‘I am sure the answer will present itself to me in due course. It always does. A near-miracle almost invariably comes my way and it clears and illuminates the path I must follow…’
There was a pause, then Tancred Vane said, ‘How did Melisande Chevret get into the house that day?’
‘I believe she stole one of your keys.’
‘If she was already inside the house, she would have had to go and open the front door when Stella rang the bell, wouldn’t she? They would have come face to face. Would Stella have entered – if she’d been confronted with the one person she feared most? Wouldn’t she have run away?’
‘She would have.’ Payne nodded. ‘But perhaps there was no confrontation? Maybe Melisande left the front door ajar.’
‘Ajar?’
‘Endeavour to visualize the scene. Stella rings the front door bell. There is no response. She then sees the door is actually ajar. She pushes it – tentatively steps into the hall – calls out. Hello? Mr Vane? A muffled voice comes from the drawing room. Come this way! I am here. Melisande has a deep throaty voice that can easily be taken for a man’s.’
‘Miss Hope didn’t have a deep throaty voice.’
‘No, of course not. She put on a different voice for you. She is an actress. You don’t expect Mother Courage to speak in the same way as Lady Bracknell, do you, or Ophelia like Mrs Danvers, or a Hounslow hairdresser like Hedda Gabler – yet they could all be played by the same actress.’
‘I wonder if she was in love with me,’ Tancred Vane suddenly blurted out.
26
Love from a Stranger
Major Payne cocked an eyebrow. ‘In love with you? Did she give any indication that she might have been in love with you?’